Student Visa changes story 29 Jan 2025-eNews22Student Visa changes story 29 Jan 2025-eNews22

From 1 January 2025, the Department of Home Affairs will no longer accept Letters of Offers from individuals applying in Australia for a Student visa. Onshore applicants will be required to include a Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) at the time of application. The change will only impact applications lodged on or after 1 January 2025. Visa applications lodged before that date using only a Letter of Offer from an education provider are not affected.

Not providing a CoE at the time of application will make an application invalid. Visa decision makers cannot assess an invalid application. An associated Bridging visa cannot be granted where the substantive visa application is not valid.

This change will align the requirements to provide evidence of an intended course of study for both onshore and offshore Student visa applications. Providing a CoE at time of visa application demonstrates a stronger commitment by the student to study at that institution. This will increase certainty for Australia’s international education sector.

There is no change to the alternative forms of evidence of intended course of study for Foreign Affairs, Defence or secondary exchange students.

Visa holders in Australia are responsible for ensuring they maintain a lawful status. If you are intending to study and not able to obtain a CoE before your current visa expires, you will need to either depart Australia unless you can apply for some visa under other legitimate options provided by the department of Home Affairs. However, under the government’s tightening of rules to curb ‘visa hopping’ (explained below) there are now restrictions to applying for a Student visa while in Australia when holding certain visas.

‘Visa Hopping’

A key commitment in the Australian government’s Migration Strategy, released in 2023, was to restrict ‘visa hopping’ – ending the loopholes that allow students and other temporary visa holders to continuously extend their stay in Australia, in some cases indefinitely.

The government had noted that the number of international students staying in Australia on a second, or subsequent student visa had grown by over 30 per cent to more than 150,000 in 2022–23.

Some experts opined that effectively curtailing ‘visa hopping’ by the government, making sure that there were only fewer, legitimate options to make ‘on-shore visa applications which it would accept from people already in the country was a better tool to manage population growth than cuts to the permanent migration intake.

The Government’s first ‘go-to’ place was to address this by putting ‘no further stay conditions on visitor visas’; it also strengthened the Genuine Student requirements, which has stopped thousands of students from hopping from student visa to student visa without a credible course progression. That complemented many other policies measure put in place such as ending unrestricted work rights and the former Government’s COVID visa, to help restore integrity in the international student system.

Then there was visitor to student pathway which had become increasingly prevalent. There were more than 36,000 applications between 1 July 2023 to the end of May 2024. That loophole has also been plugged and Visitor Visa holders can no longer apply for Student Visas onshore. This has resulted in stopping the subversion of the offshore student visa integrity measures.

Temporary Graduate Visa holders are also no longer able to apply for Student Visas onshore. A study had found 32 per cent of Temporary Graduate Visa holders were enrolling to study again closer to the expiry of their visa purely to prolong their stay in Australia. This particular measure was introduced to fight against a cohort of Australian population which was assuming the profile of becoming ‘permanently temporary’ in Australia. Such cohort sizeable in number, can cause real headaches for the government, regularly requiring services down under but often seen sending sizeable remittances overseas to help their poor relatives in their home countries.

How to deal with them and care for them has experts divided. Some allege they are exploited by their employers and call for strict regulation and compliance to protect them.

“‘Permanently temporary’ migrants are part of Australia(they) are not simply numbers on the national balance of payments. Nor are they passive victims who require law makers to step in and take responsibility for their lives. They are people who are an integral part of our community”, wrote Sanmati Verma, Managing Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre Sydney last year.

Others argue not to have that cohort as an essential by-product of the system design. It seems, the architects of ending the ‘Visa hopping’ measures have chosen the latter.